Drop In Violent Crime A Mystery To Experts

June 14, 2001|By Naftali Bendavid Washington Bureau

Washington — Violent crime fell almost 15 percent across the country last year, the largest one-year plunge since the government began keeping such figures, suggesting that the remarkable decline in crime that began eight years ago has not bottomed out.

Criminologists had no immediate explanation for why violent crime should drop so dramatically in one year, with Americans suffering about 1 million fewer crimes in 2000 than in 1999. But the figures punctuate a trend that has been attributed to everything from the booming economy to the end of the crack cocaine wars.

"The victims of violent crime are predominantly in minority neighborhoods, so the factors that affect minority neighborhoods are the factors that affect the violent crime rate," said Jerome Skolnick, a professor at New York University Law School.

"As of last year, the economy was in very good shape with very low unemployment," Skolnick added. "The decline in crack use was responsible for the decline in violence in a lot of cities."

What made the Justice Department's report striking, however, was that it contradicted FBI figures from just two weeks ago indicating that decline in crime had stopped. Those FBI numbers showed crime virtually unchanged from 1999 to 2000 and prompted some experts to declare the long crime drop officially over.

The dramatically different conclusions stem in part from the different approaches of the two yearly reports. The FBI assembles crime numbers from police departments, while the Justice Department study released Wednesday is a "victimization survey," in which individuals are contacted and asked if they have been the victim of a crime.

Some criminologists consider the survey a more accurate measure, because some people do not report crimes to the police but are happy to tell a surveyor they have been targeted.

The victims' survey includes crimes, like assault without a weapon, that are not considered serious enough to be included in the FBI figures. And it omits homicide, because murder victims obviously are unable to speak to surveyors.

Because the survey is skewed toward less-serious crimes, Northeastern University criminal justice professor James Alan Fox offered a caution about Wednesday's report. "If you look at the most serious offenses, the drop is much less steep," Fox said. "This is good news, but it's not great news."